Bobcats drop five-set thriller to Heat

The Brandon University Bobcats were two points from a perfect end to the semester and their first weekend sweep in more than three years.

But a marathon of a match ended with a near-minute-long rally and an attack BU just barely couldn’t corral.

UBC Okanagan snuck away from the Healthy Living Centre with a 3-2 (21-25, 25-21, 21-25, 25-21, 19-17) victory on Saturday.

“It shows we can compete,” said Bobcats head coach Kailan Robinson. “We’ve been working a lot on our competitive energy, closing out games when we haven’t in the past. We’re getting better, so at least we’re seeing improvements.”

“We wanted to shut down their best players like (Natalie) Funk and I think we did a better job of that,” Robinson added. “We wanted to maintain our serve pressure because they weren’t passing really well. I think, for the most part, we did that.”

The Bobcats (1-9) established an early lead on tough serving and continued blasting away throughout the set. They recorded three aces, including one by Carly Thomson on a four-point run to lead 19-17.

UBCO (4-8) tied it 21-21, but Cassidy Hauta scored, then served the next three points, including an ace on set point to put BU up 1-0.

The second set was full of errors on both sides, a total of 16, leading to a 17-17 tie.

The Heat were perfect from there, though, and the Bobcats weren’t. Marija Josipovic, who made five of UBCO’s seven errors in the set, hammered home three kills and added a block on Steph Miller to pull away and tie the match 1-1.

The third was a total turnaround, the cleanest set on both sides.

Miller led the Bobcats early with three kills to help them ahead 12-9, and they stayed up the rest of the way.

Miller racked up three more kills on a four-point stretch to make it 21-17, then served BU up to set point before a UBCO service error put Brandon ahead 2-1.

The Heat opened up a 7-3 advantage in the fourth, but the Bobcats blocked their way back into it. First, Hauta put up a huge solo stuff, then Alexa Parken and Miller teamed up for another before Parken tacked on another solo.

Miller added back-to-back kills to put BU up 11-10.

However, the Bobcats gave up the critical run on Madison Gardner’s serve. She made three aces on six serves to pull ahead 18-13.

The Bobcats took advantage of a few errors to chip away to a 20-19 deficit, but Funk found two gaps in the BU defence and pushed the Heat to the fifth set.

UBCO raced ahead 9-4 in the tiebreaker, seemingly in total control until it wasn’t. Dyer served a quick three-point run, including an ace to elicit a Heat timeout.

After the break, the visitors passed perfectly to let setter Hayden Hagel feed anyone she wanted. At first, it worked to stretch the lead to 12-8, but then Maddy Hettinga served a huge five-point run, including an ace after UBCO’s second timeout to pull ahead 13-12.

It went into extra points, which gave Robinson a tough decision to make. She started the set with Brynn Wildeboer serving for Parken, and subbed the middle blocker back in when she rotated to the front row.

Robinson wanted Wildeboer to serve again, meaning Parken was done for the night at 14-14. When the score hit 17-17, the five-foot-six rookie had to return to the floor.

The players handled it well as Hettinga simply switched positions to middle, where she spent two years playing at UBCO.

“I honestly kind of forgot about Maddy being able to play middle. I was like ‘Carly, you should set out of the middle, Brynn can play right side, and they just naturally decided on their own, Maddy’s a former middle, so she can go in,” Robinson said.

“That’s just our mentality is just to be fearless and expect to win, so I didn’t think we’d get in that situation but we handled it pretty calmly.”

UBCO took the next two points anyway to secure a split.

Miller led Brandon with 13 kills while Hettinga added 12, offering plenty of optimism for the team heading into a softer second-semester schedule.

“Having Maddy this weekend step up and play the way she did, that’s all we’ve been needing and wanting is some top-scoring left sides,” Robinson said.

“Rolling in the second half, if we can continue to score that well from the left side, we’ll have more success against other teams.”

The Bobcats are back in action at the Wesmen Classic on Dec. 28-30, then visit the Fraser Valley Cascades to resume conference play on Jan. 9-10.

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